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Robot turtle stashing books on an island.

Adding a Description to git stash

Using git stash

Saving code for later use with git stash is one of my favorite features of git. Stashing code allows me to save an idea without making a commit. I often find myself stashing code while trying out ideas or performing a big refactor. My only dislike about using git stashis that I often forget why I stashed the code in the first place. This is where git stash save comes into save the day.

The power of git stash save

Similar to git commit -m using git stash save adds a brief description that provides better context to a stash it’s applied to. When assigning a normal stash the only available identifier is the stash ID which isn’t very descriptive. Instead I like to use the git stash save which allows me to add a string to each stash.

How to use git stash save

After making changes I run the following command in the terminal and replace out the text inside of the quotations with a meaningful description.

git stash save "Descriptive text"

Then when I’m ready to reference this stash again, I run git stash list followed up git stash apply and the ID of the stash I would like to open.

Example Scenario

Assuming that I’ve already made some stashes using git stash save on a repo. First, I’ll want to reference my stashes using git stash list. This will display all of the stashes I’ve created and display any of the descriptions I created previously with git stash save.

This is what my CL displays after running git stash list.

stash@{0}: WIP on master: 3b95319 Added first blog.
stash@{1}: WIP on master: 24059fc Made various tweaks to layout component.

After that, I’ll copy the ID of the stash I want to apply. In this case, I’ll apply the second option using git stash apply stash@{1}. This will apply the code from my stash to the current head of whatever branch I’m checked into. After that my changes are applied and I’m ready to continue where I left off.

Micheal England

Article by Micheal England.

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